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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28481937">beautiful stranger</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/theblackhall/pseuds/theblackhall'>theblackhall</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pentagon (Korea Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Fluff, M/M, guitarist yuto, they blush a lot apparently, vocalist wooseok, wooyu, writing songs late at night while slowly falling in love kinda vibe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:34:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,767</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28481937</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/theblackhall/pseuds/theblackhall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"You stopped me in my tracks and put me right in my place."</p><p>Where Yuto struggles to write a new song until Wooseok comes along and saves him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adachi Yuto/Jung Wooseok</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>beautiful stranger</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is just for fun because i am stressed with finals and i needed to let this out of my system. it's also inspired by halsey's song finally // beautiful stranger from (the super amazing album) manic. give it a listen :D happy new year!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sitting alone inside the practice room was Yuto, with a red electric guitar perched carefully in his lap. His nails—painted black a few weeks ago and were then slowly fading—strummed the six strings slowly while the sound reverbrated through the speaker beside his chair.</p><p>He waited.</p><p>Perhaps for the sound to stir some sort of emotion inside him, or trigger a memory that he didn’t know he wanted to remember…he wasn’t too sure. So he strummed the guitar once more, this time with a different chord, only to no avail.</p><p>The truth was simple: Yuto had a bad writer’s block, and he hadn’t written a song in three months when he used to write at least one song every two weeks.</p><p>He didn’t know what went wrong, or where his inspiration had gone. All he <em>did</em> know was that he didn’t feel the excitement bubbling in his stomach when his fingers grazed the frets of the guitar. The chords never seemed to satisfy him, and Yuto found himself wishing for sounds that never existed just to feel something <em>new</em>.</p><p>“This is useless,” he said to no one in particular.</p><p>His hand moved to unplug the guitar, but it halted halfway when the sound of footsteps approached the door to the practice room. Yuto waited for the door to open, and it did several seconds later to reveal a tall man with faded orange hair and a shy smile on his face. He stood awkwardly with one hand still on the doorknob, his eyes darting around the room to find it empty save for the guitarist in his seat.</p><p>“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’re still here,” said the stranger.</p><p>“Were you waiting for me to leave?” Yuto asked. “Wooseok, right?”</p><p>Wooseok, upon hearing his name leave Yuto’s mouth, looked straight at the latter as if he’d grown a second head.</p><p>“You know my name?”</p><p>“Of course,” Yuto gave him a small smile, “I’ve seen you play the drums. You’re really good at it.”</p><p>Although Yuto couldn’t see it under the dim lighting of the studio, Wooseok’s cheeks reddened at his compliment as he slowly closed the door behind him.</p><p>“Thank you,” he said, “you’re really good too. I love listening to your songs.”</p><p><em>Great</em>, Wooseok thought as he spoke, <em>might as well tell him you have a crush on him while you’re at it.</em></p><p>It was Yuto’s turn to blush at the comment, and he sheepishly looked down at the guitar in his lap. The sudden silence engulfed them a little too awkwardly, so Wooseok cleared his throat and took a step forward.</p><p>“I hope I’m not bothering you or anything. It’s kinda late and I thought the room would be empty already.”</p><p>Yuto pulled the vacant plastic chair on his right forward and patted the seat, silently beckoning Wooseok to sit down before saying, “Do you always come here when no one’s around?”</p><p>“You make it sound like I’m committing a crime,” Wooseok chuckled while making his way towards the empty seat.</p><p>He felt his heart hammering in his chest when his eyes followed Yuto’s actions twenty seconds prior. After all, he had never been in such close proximity to the latter before, and the closest he’d ever gotten was when they performed a song together with a few other people during a Halloween party.</p><p>Even then, Wooseok was behind the drums, and Yuto was on the other side of the stage rocking a guitar solo that took him two full weeks to master. It was something about him that Wooseok admired most—that determination, it motivated Wooseok to work just as hard to achieve his own goals.</p><p>That’s how Wooseok ended up entering the practice room when nobody’s around.</p><p>He waited night after night until every other student had left the studio and locked himself inside, practicing something that required his own voice rather than a drum kit.</p><p>“What do you do?” Yuto asked as he leaned back in his chair, turning his body slightly to face the other. “You know…once everyone leaves.”</p><p>“I—” Wooseok began, but halted. He looked down at his fingers that were tugging at the hem of his sweater, “I sing.”</p><p>Yuto’s expression softened. The two words came out almost barely audible, with traces of insecurity evident in Wooseok’s tone. If anything, Yuto understood what Wooseok was feeling simply because he had been playing the guitar for three whole years, but his insecurity never really left.</p><p>“Why are you looking at me like that?” Wooseok asked, snapping Yuto out of a trance he didn’t realize he was delving in. “God, you must find it weird.” Wooseok buried his face in his hands before running his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know how to tell you this but every time I hear the songs you play, even when you’re just practicing, they make me want to…sing too.”</p><p>The guitar was already placed on its stand by the time Wooseok admitted the reason behind his late night singing practices. He could feel Yutos’s gaze on him, so Wooseok slowly looked up to meet the latter’s eyes.</p><p>“<em>My</em> songs make <em>you</em> want to sing?” Yuto muttered more to himself than to the taller man, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t believe that something he did solely for his own satisfaction could cause a spark in other people, and at that moment, words couldn’t describe the spark that began to grow inside <em>him</em>.</p><p>Wooseok only nodded, his eyes still locked with Yuto’s despite his hands visibly shaking in his lap due to nervousness. There he was, face to face with the man he’d only been watching from a distance—whether it was during lunch break at the cafeteria or their practice sessions in that very room, Wooseok was never too brave to approach Yuto and talk to him. Yet he remained seated in front of Yuto right then, mentally telling himself to calm down before the other could notice.</p><p>“I haven’t written a new song in a while,” Yuto blurted.</p><p>“Really? Why?”</p><p>“I wish I knew,” Yuto sighed. “It’s like, every time I picked up my guitar and strummed some random chords, I couldn’t piece any of them together. I even tried to change my methods and wrote some lyrics first without thinking of the melody, but in the end…the melody never came.”</p><p>Wooseok pursed his lips. “Can I see those lyrics?”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I mean, if you don’t mind of course.”</p><p>“Oh… Of course,” Yuto repeated with a smile before getting up to take his bag that was placed near the wall. He unzipped it and took out a black spiral notebook the size of his hand before sitting beside Wooseok again.</p><p>It took him a couple seconds, but he found the page that he had labelled with a strip of paper and passed the book to the other. He began chewing on his bottom lip subconsciously as he anticipated Wooseok’s reaction to the words he had scribbled so carelessly onto the yellowing pages.</p><p>His eyes trailed from the book to Wooseok’s face, and he found the latter mouthing the words as he read. A smile replaced his frown at the sight of a very focused Wooseok, reading his lyrics so seriously when he couldn’t do it on his own.</p><p>The silence that fell between them at that very moment was different from earlier, where awkwardness slowly dissolved into comfort. Wooseok found the lyrics interesting, and he never knew Yuto could write about such simple topics and turn them into something so…beautiful.</p><p>“What do you think?” Yuto broke the silence once Wooseok stopped mouthing the words across the pages.</p><p>It was only until Wooseok turned his head to face him that Yuto realized how close he was to the latter. Their noses almost touched, and their shoulders were pressed together between them.</p><p>Despite their increasing heartbeats and stolen glances from lips to eyes to lips again, “Get your guitar,” was all that Wooseok said.</p><p>He began to sing the lyrics to a melody that he’d had playing in mind the entire time he was reading them. It took a few tries, but Yuto caught on and played the right chords on the guitar to accompany Wooseok’s singing.</p><p>By the time Wooseok reached the chorus, Yuto was no longer looking away. He wasn’t hiding the fact that he was so mesmerized by the melody that Wooseok had come up with in the span of ten minutes, and maybe, just maybe, he was more mesmerized by the person singing than the melody itself.</p><p>Wooseok could feel his heart beating rapidly in his chest, both from the fact that it was his first time singing in front of an actual person instead of his own reflection and Yuto’s never ending gaze. He returned the gaze, and as Yuto caught on to the melody, singing along with him during the second chorus, Wooseok didn’t want to look away.</p><p>When the song ended, Yuto felt as if the heaviest weight on his shoulders was lifted at once. His fingers were still on the guitar strings and his eyes remained staring into Wooseok’s as if he was the only person in the world, not just in the room.</p><p>“Thank you,” Yuto found himself saying. “That was beautiful.”</p><p>Wooseok smiled, “Thank you too. I needed that.”</p><p>“Do you think, maybe, we could record that together tomorrow?”</p><p>“Of course,” Wooseok willed his cheeks not to flush into a shade of red, but he could only do so much at attempting to control involuntary actions. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”</p><p>The smile that appeared on Yuto’s lips was more than enough to increase the prominent blush on Wooseok’s cheeks. Yuto liked the atmosphere that surrounded them, and he didn’t want the night to end just yet, so he asked the beautiful stranger before him to sing the song once more.</p><p>“Sure,” said Wooseok.</p><p>So he sang again, with more confidence this time.</p><p>He wasn’t really looking at the lyrics anymore. His eyes were too occupied with Yuto and the way he carried himself while playing the guitar, so effortlessly that it made him feel like they were in a bubble that only the two of them could see.</p><p>The two sat in the practice room all night until the sky outside faded into a sunrise, singing their new song and making adjustments to improve the parts that they favored most. And it became their routine, after that night, to write and sing until their hearts’ content while the rest of the city fell asleep.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i wanted to write more but i feel like it's better if i just leave them in this safe bubble they've created for themselves :&gt;</p></blockquote></div></div>
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